Road Trippin' It

With the Explorer  packed with our necessities for a week long trip, Easton and I hit the road going north at 9:43 on Thursday.  It was going to be an adventure with our ultimate destination being Craig and Gretchen's in Albany, New York.  Easton was my navigator and helper.  We listened to music and watched movies on the laptop.  Narnia and Narnia II and Harry Potter helped us pass the time.  

We followed this lovely Ben and Jerry's car for at least 100 miles.  It was pretty trafficy and we just couldn't seem to get ahead of it!  After ten hours of driving we stopped in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania for the evening and stayed at the Quality Inn.  It wasn't our first choice or our second, but we were happy to have a place to stay and be done with driving.  We popped into the 24 hours Denny's for our late evening dinner.  That was the only place open in the town!

Easton and I split the blueberry pancake grandslam breakfast:  two eggs, two blueberry pancakes, two pieces of bacon (we ordered another side of bacon) and a huge pile of hashbrowns.  It was the perfect dinner and just the right amount of food for both of us!  We slept well with our tummies nice and full.

After a nice complimentary breakfast in the morning we drove for about 45 minutes to reach Hershey, Pennsylvania, the place where Mr. Hershey invented the chocolate bar and started his amazing chocolate business.  We were able to visit the museum and learn all about making chocolate bars out of the large cocoa bean.  It's quite the interesting process!  We went to the "Chocolate Lab" and we able to create our own personalized chocolate bars while learning even more about chocolate.  We were able to eat the leftover chocolate ingredients and it was delicious!

Mr. Hershey put wheels on old bathtub to wheel the chocolate supplies around the factory.

Here we are in our awesome hairnets getting ready to design our own chocolate bars!

Just waiting for our chocolate...

 Let the designing begin!  We poured melted chocolate into molds, creating our design.  Then we swirled the chocolate with a stick to get just the right pattern that we wanted.

Eating the leftover melted chocolate, YUM!

 After we left the museum, we got in our car and went to start it....NOTHING!  The car was dead and wouldn't start.  UGH!  I tried again and the system started to go haywire.  The flashers started flashing, the alarm sound started going off, the lights inside the car started blinking and the computer screen kept flashing on and off.  It was like the car was possessed!  Easton and I were getting a little nervous.  I called my handy, dandy Ford Roadside Assistance people and scheduled someone to come out and give us a jump or whatever was needed.  While waiting about an hour for him to come Easton and I walked down the street to the Chocolate Avenue Cafe and ordered some yummy lunch to help pass the time.  The town of Hershey was so beautiful and clean.  It was a nice place to be "stuck" in and I felt safe.

 

Our helper arrived on the scene and took one look at our battery and literally groaned when he saw it.  He said it was the worst corroded battery he had ever seen and he had been doing this for many years.  He got the car jumped and told me to not turn it off or it may never start again.  We took off directly for Craig's and carefully analyzed the distance and compared that with how much gas was left in our car.  The guy told me it was OK to fill up the tank while the car was still running, even though that made me really nervous.  We drove directly to their house without making one stop....I followed traffic and really just clipped along. We arrived around 10:00 pm with 33 miles on our tank to spare.  Phew!  We made it and I'm grateful.  I'll get the car into the dealership on Monday and see what's going on.